EPT
Location Confirmed: Sending Supplies
Star Fox 64
Star Fox 64
It's a long journey for a young gamer to become a tryhard. I began (as I assume many do) as a casual gamer. I had a gameboy, and spent a fair amount of time playing Pokemon. It's easy to be a casual in Pokemon, though, since you can just have one pokemon (plus however many you need to capture to get HMs and open new passages) and use it in every fight. My venusaur just spammed cut and razor leaf all day every fight.
It was fun, but ultimately I never tried to get really good at the game. Things changed soon, though. On my 10th birthday I got probably one of the best gifts of my life, the thing that makes me a real gamer today and not a casual: One Nintendo 64 with a controller, and Star Fox 64 with a rumble pack.
For those of you who don't know, Star Fox 64 was the major release for the N64 that used the rumble pack addon. It was a real-time spacecraft shooting game that featured smooth graphics, impeccable controls, a 3D combat environment, and comprehensive voice-overs for all the dialogue in the game.
As I first started up the game, I quickly realized this was nothing like Pokemon. Each gaming instance is self-contained, and rather than casually making a decision about which pf 2 pokemon abilities to spam over and over again, I have to constantly twitch and react. In time I realize that this is a game of skill. I must become faster, quicker. I must learn the levels. I must learn to do a barrel roll. I begin to dodge fire, take secret routes, shoot enemies accurately and hit all the power-ups in each level.
In time, though, I begin to realize that I want something more. Star fox 64, you see, was not an entirely linear game. There are several routes you can take through the game, based on how well you accomplished your goals in each level. The routes split off into Easy, Medium, and Hard, and you can flop back and forth between them fairly consistently. At my skill level, I could handle the Easy levels pretty well, and most of the Medium levels (Solar gave me a lot of trouble), but not well enough to get up to the Hard levels.
Normally, this wouldn't be a problem. I could sit down, blast my way through the easy levels, creep up the backside of Andross' home planet, Venom, and disable the shield satellite, fighting off whichever Star Wolf members survived our sortie at Fortuna. Descending to the planet surface, fighting off his massive ground army and his golem, I could eventually reach the dark side of the planet, entering into his lair, and confronting the villain directly. After dispatching him, he would be revealed to be a massive robot, and defeating the robot, I'd escape rather handily back to Corneria.
The awards ceremony was always pretty chill. Pepper would congratulate me, invite me to join the army, and I'd decline. The credits would roll, and the Star Fox team would fly off into the sunset, like the awesome space cowboys they are.
And then, in that silence after the music closes up, I hear something horrible. I hear Andross, laughing hideously in the background, and see a ghastly image of him superimposed on the sun. ANDROSS LIVES.
Andross' Escape
This bothered me a lot. I tried and tried, but no matter how many times I played, every time Andross would be alive at the end. Every time, he would escape as I worked my way across the surface of Venom, and I would fight is robotic doppelganger. It would be easy to give up, but I knew in my 10-year-old heart that Andross could not be allowed to escape. Justice demanded it. I had to become stronger. I had to become more skilled.
It eventually became clear that the only way to actually catch Andross would be to approach Venom from the other side, the dark side. But to do this requires a great deal of effort-- you have to destroy one of his major supply bases to have a chance of assaulting his main fleet, stationed in the Area 6 defense zone of Venom. There are two possibilities (barring outmaneuvering him entirely using a warp route in Sector X) for doing this.
The first route requires crushing his air support on Corneria, the first level, enabling the Cornerian fleet to engage his advance fleet in Sector Y-- you then must support the Cornerian fleet and destroy the Venomian Advance fleet by a large enough margin that the Cornerians can defend Katina on their own. This frees you to go on the offensive, taking out Andross' bio-weapon on Aquas. If you can do this and launch a complete stealth attack on his military base on Zoness, you will be free to pass through Sector Z and begin your main assault on Venom.
The second route has an easier up-front requirement-- you can take any route, as long as you successfully reach Andross' Macbeth base (a Medium level). However, you have to win the Macbeth level extremely well, shooting a bunch of unrelated switches during one of the more difficult boss fights, all while operating a Tank (the Landmaster) instead of your normal Arwing. Doing so will let you assault Area 6 without passing through Sector Z.
Either way, approaching Venom from the other side will not give Andross the time he needs to escape and distract you with a robotic clone. You will face the villain directly, and vanquish him once and for all.
It took me many tries to get good enough to get an overwhelming victory on Sector Y, Many more tries to successfully defeat the boss of Aquas. Overcoming Zoness by comparison was fairly easy. What really made things tough for me, though, was dealing with Sector Z. In this debris-filled area, your main craft, The Great Fox, has to slow to a crawl and clear out the debris. Andross takes this opportunity to use one of his trump cards: he launches 6 anti-capital ship missiles directly at The Great Fox while it is immobilized. You're forced to defend The Great Fox from all the missiles, and if any connect, it will become too damaged for you to launch an assault on Area 6. To make matters worse, several interceptors come along as well, making this a dogfight scenario. Even with the help of Falco's mercenary friend, it took me many tries to defeat this level.
Through the Middle
Finally, after many tries, I finally managed to put it all together in one go-- defeating successive levels without losing a wing and my hyper laser upgrade, shooting down boss after boss, and destroying all 6 missiles. After an arduous and long gaming session, I had made it-- Star Fox entered the Area 6 defense zone, a mission titled "Through the Middle". It is time to engage Andross' main fleet and shoot my way down to Venom's surface. There will be no escape this time.
Adrenalin pumps through me as the level opens. Fox shouts, "Entering Venom Air Defense Zone!" and the music is strident, pressing. You can feel the need to push fowards. After crushing a few sentries, the first thing I notice is the spindly space platforms dotting the area. The look neutral, but, given the opportunity, will fire volleys of lasers at you. Then, 10 seconds in, Slippy says "Space Mines Ahead!" and for the first time I know true fear. I'd seen space mines before, you see, in Sector X. A player of unusual dexterity or skill can take them out just using regular lasers and charged shots. In Sector X, there is only one brief minefield that can be cleared with a single bomb, and every time I passed through it, that was what I did. Simple enough.
Area 6 is no Sector X, however. Supporting Andross main fleet is three full minefields in succession. After immediately dying the first time through, I restarted the level. Starting a new life with only 3 bombs and a single-laser, I had to burn all my resources just to get through the opening minefield. Coming out of the minefield is no restful respite, either-- defensive spindles are everywhere, multiple squads of spacecraft come after you and fire accurately, and Falco's got a bogey on him. And by a bogey I mean a full unit of enemies that you have to shoot down to save him.
Battered and bruised, I emerge from the spindle defenses with the radio going off as the first wave of Andross' capital ships bear down on me, firing missiles and lasers. ROB is here to offer a supply drop, I think. I answer the radio, though I won't have the time to actually pick up the supplies. In this moment I realize why it was so important to keep The Great Fox unharmed in sector Z. Instead of the usual "Location Confirmed, Sending Supplies" message, ROB says: "Great Fox will cover you".
Brilliant yellow lasers lance down from above, crippling the capital ships and giving me a chance to take out the missiles. There are no words to describe how awesome it feels to a 10-year-old when, in a desperate fight for the fate of the solar system, with your spacecraft on the brink of collapse, pushing through the main fleet of the great enemy, you realize you have backup. And not some dinky supply box with a wing repair or a bomb. No, you're about to bring down the fire of the heavens on the villains.
Great Fox will cover you.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/l7wZal.jpg)
God, what a great game.
